


are you always

by dygonilly



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: A bit sad, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Comfort, Existentialism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loneliness, M/M, Sickfic, hopeful and loving, wonwoo is looking for rocks but he finds a friend instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29930856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dygonilly/pseuds/dygonilly
Summary: Wonwoo finds an android amongst the scrap metal in a pawn shop.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Comments: 22
Kudos: 121





	are you always

**Author's Note:**

> u know when the android starts 2 have feelings. yeah.
> 
> (the implied character death is a very small part of the story and it's not meant to be anyone in particular, but the tag is there in case)
> 
> title is from 'sleepless' by epik high. enjoy!

The shop attendant finishes inspecting the last rock and blinks at Wonwoo, eyes magnified comically by her goggles. 

“Thirty-four,” she croaks.

Wonwoo frowns. “These are rare sediments. I spent an entire week extracting that one.” He points to the smallest rock. It’s the size of his palm and the fissures that web across it are glowing green. 

The attendant removes her goggles. “Forty.”

“Sixty. At  _ least _ .”

“Fifty, and I’ll bar you if you ask for any more.”

Wonwoo acquiesces with a nod. He needs the money, but he needs a dealer this side of the Belt even more. The attendant pulls a lever to send the rocks along the conveyor and out of sight. 

She uploads a code onto the screen facing Wonwoo and he leans forward to scan it. In the corner of his vision, his bank account shoots up a few figures. 

“Thanks.” 

As he turns to leave, his eye catches on a body slumped against the wall. It’s surrounded by scrap parts, half buried in junk. If it weren’t for its shining purple complexion, it might look like a young man who had fallen asleep, head hanging chin to chest, long legs spread along the floor.

“Where did you get that?” Wonwoo asks in wonder.

The attendant follows his pointing finger and shrugs. “Same place I get everything else: somebody brought it in. Came out of a wreckage in the dunes.”

Wonwoo drops into a crouch to inspect the android. There are scratches all over its metallic surface and a few wires protruding from the left shoulder. He has only ever seen a model like this in advertisements. It’s beautiful.

“How much are you selling it for?” he asks.

“You want it? It’s yours,” says the attendant.

“What—for free?”

“Nobody’s buying it and it’s leaking sand all over my shop. You’d be doing me a favour.”

Wonwoo unearths the android from the junk and hauls its heavy frame into the wide rectangular wagon he drags around the town centre. It doesn’t fit perfectly—the limbs are too long to keep entirely inside the wagon—so Wonwoo takes off his cloak and covers what he can. He places two bags of rice on top of it to further the illusion. It doesn’t work very well; he’ll just have to hope that nobody looks too closely. 

He carries the android back like that, like it’s a child who is too tired to walk, limbs dangling over the edges and head lolling when the terrain gets rough. 

Wonwoo keeps looking over his shoulder to check it’s still there. 

  
  
  
  
  


Home is a relative term. Home, for Wonwoo, is a rusty drill transporter that can climb to a measly altitude of ten feet if there’s enough fuel in the tank, and even then it shudders. It’s an ugly, clunky thing, but it has two levels to live and work on and it drills like a dream. Wonwoo loves it. He’s lived out of it for so long that it feels like an extension of his body. 

It feels strange not to be the only one inside. 

The android is laid out on his workbench with its hands folded over its stomach. Wonwoo feels rather awkward—perhaps it would be more comfortable on the couch—but it’s not awake, and anyway, Wonwoo needs to do some considerable work on its hardware before he can even hope for it to come back online. 

He brushes the sand off the metal tabletop with a smile, and gets to work.

  
  
  
  
  


It’s been almost two days and nothing is working. There are grease marks all over Wonwoo’s hands and face and he’s starting to go cross-eyed from how tired he is. There’s no reason to be so invested in waking up an android that’s probably been fried for weeks, but Wonwoo has always been hopeful to a fault. 

Eventually, his body gives out before his willpower; he can’t work with wires that are too small to see without goggles if his eyes won’t even stay open for longer than two seconds. He closes the latch on the android’s temple and pulls his headset off, wheeling his chair back to his desk to close off all the lights before he leaves. 

He wanders to the second level of the transporter, body moving on autopilot until he gets to his bunk and falls face-first onto the mattress.

  
  
  
  
  


When Wonwoo wakes up, it’s dark outside, and the air smells like food. Strange. He must be hungrier than he thought. He puts his glasses back on and slides down the ladder to the main living area. 

“Hello!”

Wonwoo yelps and almost falls over in shock. 

He turns to find the android standing in the middle of the kitchen. Awake. Cooking. Smiling at Wonwoo. His eyes are bright blue and he’s a lot taller standing up. Wonwoo cleaned the scratches and dust off his skin before he fixed anything else; it’s a beautiful indigo laced with blue where his wires run beneath it like veins.

“You’re awake,” Wonwoo says, eyes wide.

“My core functioning system has been restarted, yes,” says the android, flipping an egg. “However, I have lost several online elements of my hardware due to a severance in my central wiring, so I am unable to discern our geographic location.”

It takes Wonwoo a second to understand the question. “We’re in my transporter. Just south of Y-109.”

The android frowns. Wonwoo didn’t know they could do that. “Y-109?”

“Yes,” Wonwoo says carefully.

“My last recorded coordinates place me at P-432.”

Wonwoo’s eyes bulge. That’s hundreds of miles away. Thousands. The furthest he’s even been was S-001, but the terrain was too unforgiving for extractions, so he had turned back before risking any real damage to the drills. 

“Well, I found you at a trade shop. The attendant told me you were pulled from some wreckage,” Wonwoo explains, keeping a careful distance between them. 

“And they did not take anything else?” the android asks, that same expression on his face. Wonwoo shrugs and shakes his head. The android’s expression clears like it was a glitch. “What is your name?” 

“Wonwoo.”

“Wonwoo. I am Jun.”

Wonwoo smiles. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Jun smiles back. The shape of it is almost hexagonal and too-large. It’s endearing. He stacks a plate with as much food as Wonwoo eats in an entire day and asks, “Is this meal sufficient?”

“Yes,” Wonwoo tries not to laugh. “This is great. Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

Jun stands beside the table and watches him eat. Wonwoo finds he doesn’t mind it as much as he should. The company is nice. Strange. But nice.

  
  
  
  
  


“Where is the rest of your crew?” Jun asks in the morning as they set off for the next extraction site.

“I don’t have one,” Wonwoo says.

“And what of your family?”

Wonwoo’s fingers tighten around the wheel. “Don’t have one.”

“Humans are very lonely creatures,” Jun says. 

Wonwoo waits for him to elaborate, but he never does. 

  
  
  
  
  


The drilling would be easier with a sentient computer to help with the calculations, but Wonwoo still stubbornly works on his own for a few days. He’s not a typically proud person, but after so much time spent working and living on his own, it’s a difficult adjustment. 

Jun doesn’t seem to mind—he’s built to follow instructions, so when Wonwoo tells him to stay out of the way, he does.

Eventually, Wonwoo feels bad and tells him he can help with a manual extraction. They wait until the dust settles from the drilling then they gear up and walk into the centre of the crater. 

“All you have to do is take this and run it along the surface. When it beeps, that means you’ve found something,” Wonwoo says. He doesn’t think about it before handing Jun the metal detector. 

Understandably, the machine goes haywire the moment Jun touches it. 

“Oh dear,” Jun says, eyes wide. 

Wonwoo laughs for the first time in months. 

For the rest of the afternoon, Jun calls out words of encouragement from the rim of the crater, carrying entire conversations by himself, happy to talk while Wonwoo provides little to no response as he works. 

Wonwoo is so used to having machines as his only companions, but this feels different. Jun doesn’t feel like a lifeless service droid or a simple collection of pre-programmed speech patterns. He feels rather real. Wonwoo chalks it up to wishful thinking—a side effect of years of self-imposed isolation. There’s no other way to explain feeling a human connection with something that has electric pulses for a heartbeat. 

  
  
  
  
  


The skies on this side of X-500 are always clear at night. Wonwoo likes to sit on the roof of the transporter with a blanket around his shoulders and watch the stars chase each other. Jun, constantly at his heels, asks him where he is going, and Wonwoo lets him follow him up through the hatch without a word.

“Do you do this often?” Jun asks once they are settled, legs crossed, facing the horizon side by side. 

Wonwoo nods. “I mostly come out here when I can’t sleep.”   
  


“There are medical alternatives that are probably more effective.”

“No, no,” Wonwoo smiles, “I just mean… it’s calming. And I like to be reminded.”

“Of what?” Jun’s face is so open, his blue eyes dimmed to adjust to their environment and trained diligently on Wonwoo’s face. Wonwoo could never be so honest and comfortable around a real person, he thinks. It’s why he’s spent so much of his adult life avoiding people. He just can’t do it. Conversations, admissions, trust—the very act of opening up to someone, knowing that they could take what you give them and throw it back in your face. Wonwoo isn’t strong enough to be ruined by another person. Or perhaps he is, or he could be, but he just doesn’t want to find out. 

It’s easy to talk to Jun. He’s objective and logical and, deep in his cranium, has a reset switch. 

“That I’m not alone,” Wonwoo says in a quiet voice.

“You are not alone,” Jun says. “But… you do feel that way.”

Unbidden, Wonwoo feels his chest tighten. This conversation might be safe to have with Jun but it doesn’t make it easy. “Yes,” he admits. “All the time.”

“The stars cannot keep you company, Wonwoo. You need living things for that.”

Wonwoo tucks his knees up to his chest and rests his cheek on them to look sideways at Jun. “I have you, don’t I?”

Jun is supposed to provide a rebuttal, here.  _ I am not a living thing, Wonwoo. I do not count.  _ He doesn’t say that. 

Instead, he looks at Wonwoo the way he did when Wonwoo told him that his ship had crashed into sand dunes and left nothing but himself and a collision of scrap metal behind, and says, “Yes, Wonwoo. You do.”

  
  
  
  
  


Jun begins acting strangely after that night. 

He was never anything close to Wonwoo’s idea of ordinary, but he does begin to do things that make Wonwoo do a double take. Wonwoo will shiver and Jun will press a blanket over his shoulders and smile when Wonwoo thanks him. Wonwoo will snap when he’s irritated and Jun will mirror his mood instead of blissfully responding in the affirmative when told to go away. 

They pass through a farming sector on their way to W-739 and Wonwoo starts to get pale when they drive past a slaughterhouse. The idea of it makes him queasy, but the smell is worse. 

“I will drive for the rest of the journey,” Jun offers, appearing at his side. 

“No, I’m okay,” Wonwoo says weakly. Jun gently pries his hands off the wheel. They’re shaking. 

“I would like it if you allowed me to drive. Please.”

Wonwoo looks into his eyes to find them wide with what looks like worry. He’s so surprised that he lets Jun move him out of the seat with steady hands that linger until Wonwoo is upright and nodding. 

“Will you be alright?” Jun asks. 

“Yes. Yeah, I’m fine.”

One of Jun’s hands comes up to push Wonwoo’s hair out of his eyes in a movement so gentle it makes Wonwoo freeze. Jun traces a thumb over his brow and smiles. “There is a phrase I have been told before. It is:  _ you think very loudly _ . It does not make logical sense, but perhaps I understand its meaning now.” 

He presses his thumb against Wonwoo’s temple and makes a sound like the vibration of a processing unit. 

“Is that what my thoughts sound like?” Wonwoo asks, amused.

Jun’s smile grows. “I think so.”

  
  
  
  
  


Wonwoo gets all the way to the kitchen before he realises what Jun said. 

I think so. 

I think so, I think so, I think so.

  
  
  
  
  


As it turns out, the shaking in Wonwoo’s hands was not only from queasiness. He falls asleep feeling dizzy and wakes up feeling ill. The transporter is parked at the edge of a sprawling lake in W-739 and Wonwoo pushes back the curtain to see the sun bouncing off its surface as it sets. He wants to walk out there and watch until it grows dark, but his body feels too heavy to move. His skin is all hot and cold and uncomfortable. He pulls his shirt off, but it doesn’t help. 

This happens more than it should. Wonwoo is only sensible enough about his diet to keep himself going and nothing more. He falls sick almost periodically, and living alone makes it difficult, but he’s used to it by now. He takes three deep breaths and swings his legs off the mattress to sit up, fighting the wave of nausea it invites. Maybe he’ll stay like this for a few minutes before standing. Maybe he’ll—

“Wonwoo! You have been asleep for—oh,” Jun pauses in front of his bunk before dropping into a crouch. “Are you alright?”

Wonwoo shakes his head very slowly. 

Jun brings a thumb to Wonwoo’s pulse point under his jaw and another to his temple. After thirty seconds, he lets go. Wonwoo leans forward as if to chase the touch and Jun smiles. “You are sick. Where is your medication?”

“Bathroom,” Wonwoo mutters. “Top drawer.”

He’s about to drift back to sleep sitting up when Jun returns with a glass of water and three pills in his palm. Wonwoo opens his mouth obediently and Jun places each pill on his tongue before feeding him a sip of water. It feels terrible to swallow, but Wonwoo manages. 

“Thanks,” he croaks. 

“You are welcome,” Jun says, taking the empty glass and setting it aside. Then he starts to get into the bed.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“I am keeping you company,” Jun says, like it’s obvious. “Unless you would rather be alone?”

“No,” Wonwoo whispers, “No, it’s… this is…”

Jun doesn’t force him to finish his sentence. He simply nudges Wonwoo until he is lying on his side and Jun can cuddle up against him, back to chest, knees against the backs of Wonwoo’s thighs as he curls into himself. 

Jun’s left palm settles over Wonwoo’s heart. 

“Your pulse is elevated because of the fever. I will wake you if it becomes a concern.”

“Okay.” Wonwoo feels overwhelmed by the care in the best way. “Your skin is cooler than usual,” he notices.

“Yes,” says Jun, “I am trying to help.”

Tears prick at Wonwoo’s eyes and he blames it on the fever, the waves of emotion that always come when his body is at its weakest. 

He feels terribly small, pressed up against Jun like this. He feels human and breakable, but he does not feel lonely. This, out of everything, is what causes the tears to fall. He covers Jun’s hand on his chest with his own shaking fingers and in response, Jun pulls him closer and closer until it would be impossible to find any spaces between them.

  
  
  
  
  


It takes Wonwoo four days to recover. Each day, Jun leaves for hours at a time and comes back with arms full of findings from the hole they drilled half a mile east. Wonwoo doesn’t know how to thank him. 

On the fifth day, Wonwoo swims out into the middle of the lake and turns to watch Jun waving at him, feet kept a cautious distance from the water, smile wide. 

Wonwoo whispers, “Life has become easier with you here.” 

Jun’s skin is kissed violet by the sun. Wonwoo waves back. 

  
  
  
  
  


“Have you ever lost somebody that was close to you?”

Wonwoo chokes on his breakfast. “Wow. Pleasant conversation topic.”

Jun isn’t deterred. “It is unpleasant. They do not go away.”

“What doesn’t?” 

“The memories of them.”

Wonwoo frowns. “Can’t you just delete them from your software? Like, erase the traces of them?” 

Jun stares at him. “Why would I do that?”

“You just said it was unpleasant,” Wonwoo points out.

“Yes. It is.” Jun looks at his hands. He turns his palms to the morning sky and traces the imprint of wiring inside his left wrist. The pulses follow his touch like magnets. Wonwoo wants to reach over and do the same, so he does. When Wonwoo’s fingers get to Jun’s palm, Jun moves their hands so they are pressed together as though they were comparing the sizes. 

When Jun smiles, Wonwoo cocks his head, confused. “What?” he asks. 

“We used to do this. This is a memory I have.”

“You and… your friend?” Wonwoo asks tentatively. Jun nods. He shifts so their fingers link together, palms pressed close and warm, then he waves their hands and grins. Wonwoo doesn’t think he’s imaging the way it is coloured with sadness.

He almost doesn’t ask, but finds there’s no reason not to. Jun will not judge him for his curiosity.

“How much do you remember?”

“Of my friend?”

Wonwoo shrugs. “In general.”

Jun hums. They are sitting in the grass beside the water. After breakfast, they will drive south to W-204, and Wonwoo will miss this place keenly.

“I will remember everything I have seen until my hardware fails, and then I will lose it.”

“You could upload it somewhere. Save everything.”

“Of course,” Jun says. His smile is definitely sad, now. “But then it will no longer belong to me. Memories are only special when they are unique.”

“Not necessarily,” Wonwoo says. He plucks a white flower from the grass and twirls it between his fingers. “You will remember today, and I will remember today. That means we will share this memory.”

“But what if you forget it one day?” Jun asks almost desperately. 

Wonwoo gently pushes the flower behind Jun’s ear.

“Then I hope you will still be there to tell me about it.”


End file.
